In Challengers, Zendaya Gets to Compete

Holding serve against the Hollywood hero narrative.

Zendaya’s two highest profile roles so far are probably as Spider-Man’s girlfriend in the MCU films, and as Paul Atreides girlfriend in the Dune movies. In both, she’s not the hero, but the hero’s helper, and to some degree the hero’s reward. The movies are only about her in the sense that they’re about how she interacts with the hero. The guy saves the world; she helps him, or cheers him on, or sometimes hinders him. But she’s not the main character…and not even the second main character. That’s the villain, who takes up more screen time, and with whom the hero generally has a more passionate, or at least more developed, relationship.

This isn’t Zendaya’s fault. It’s how Hollywood has always worked in the past, and how it still works to a large extent. Which is one reason why it’s so much fun to see Zendaya play a decidedly not supporting role in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers.

In some ways the film is set up as a typical Hollywood narrative; Art Donaldson, (Mike Faist) is a nerdy would-be tennis champion. He’s the underdog who inevitably, through determination and grit and kindness, comes from behind to win the girl, Tashi (Zendaya) and beat his asshole friend and doubles partner turned antagonist, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor.) We’ve all seen that before, right?

Except, in this version, everything is scrambled, in large part because Tashi refuses to act as either a victory prize or a supportive secondary pretty face. At the start of the film,as they’re all graduating high school, she’s the best tennis player of the three of them, in part because she’s the most passionate about the game. She says tennis is a relationship, and she treats it as more important than her relationships; she promises to date whichever of Art or Patrick wins a match between them, and follows through when Patrick is victorious.

Tashi says that she doesn’t want to get between Art and Patrick, but she seems to find the competition between them (and the homoerotic tension between them) exhilarating. Her investment in tennis also continues to overrun her investment in…well, anything else. She breaks up with Patrick when he objects to her critiquing his game when they’re in the middle of sex.

Shortly afterwards, Tashi suffers a devastating knee injury, destroying her professional hopes. She stays in the game as a coach though, and eventually marries and guides Art to victory. Though she keeps sleeping with Patrick occasionally, when he happens to run into her while touring (much less successfully than Art.)

Tashi is, in other words, a volcanic bundle of ambition and desire in a slender frame and immaculate attire. Her frustrations, needs, and obsessive competitive spirit split the male narrative of manly climax into a collection of severed, pulsing, heaving fragments. The movie itself leaps around in time, not with the calculated swagger of Pulp Fiction, but in a kind of sweaty, over-determined fugue, as the three main protagonists slip from charged memory to charged memory. Forward progress slides into frozen eroticized close ups, as in seemingly endless last game between Patrick and Art. Or the narrative thrust gets distracted by pleasurable detours, as when Tashi kisses Art and Patrick together, and then pulls free, leaving them kissing each other while she watches with a rapturous smile.

Tashi isn’t always likable (even to herself), and her motives aren’t always especially clear (even to herself.) She’s consumed with the desire to win, and as part of that she likes to fuck with people (in various senses). She despises weakness, in herself and others. She’s living vicariously through Art’s career which is a major burden for him when he wants to retire. She hates feeling like she’s dependent; she hates having anyone depend on her—which is in part why she keeps on with the infidelities.

These aren’t especially uncommon traits to see on film. It’s just they usually come gendered male, while the woman’s role is to fix the hero and make him a better he, or stand aside with long-suffering patience.

Tashi, though, has little patience, and while she wants to improve Art’s game, that’s because she wants to shine as much as because she wants him to. It’s no coincidence that the last shot of the film isn’t of Art winning, or Patrick winning, but of Tashi shouting in joy on the sideline, which isn’t in fact the sideline as long as she’s sitting there. Hollywood knows where women are supposed to go in the story. But Challengers is playing a different game.